Digital Commons Network^™

Bankruptcy & The Underwater Home: A Case For Real Property Redemption, David Sheinfeld

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code exists to satisfy the claims of creditors and preserve an economic “fresh start” for the debtor after bankruptcy. In exchange for surrendering her property to the trustee to have it monetized (i.e., sold), the debtor receives a discharge of her debts and an injunction against future creditor in personam actions to recover them. However, the in personam injunction is insufficient to protect consumer debtors who are in default on mortgages encumbering underwater homes because the creditor’s in rem rights remain; after the conclusion of the case, the creditor can continue foreclosure proceedings, which …

Libor Phaseout: Litigation Is Coming, John Michael Neubert

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This paper will explore the different steps market participants should take to make sure they are prepared when LIBOR is phased out in December 2021. Part I will focus on the actions market participants should do before going into negotiations that can increase their potential to reach a consensual agreement. Part II will explore what financial firms should be prepared for during the negotiation process and what claims may arise when no agreement is reached. The decision for how to handle any LIBOR-linked financial instrument in their portfolio should be left to the discretion of market participants themselves. This paper …

Can The Liberal Order Be Sustained? Nations, Network Effects, And The Erosion Of Global Institutions, Bryan H. Druzin

Michigan Journal of International Law

A growing retreat from multilateralism is threatening to upend the institutions that underpin the liberal international order. This article applies network theory to this crisis in global governance, arguing that policymakers can strengthen these institutions by leveraging network effect pressures. Network effects arise when networks of actors—say language speakers or users of a social media platform—interact and the value one user derives from the network increases as other users join the network (e.g., the more people who speak your language, the more useful it is because there are more people with whom you can communicate). Crucially, network effect pressures produce …

A Historical Analysis Of The Investment Company Act Of 1940, Michael B. Weiner

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

More than 100 million Americans invest $25 trillion in mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (collectively, “funds”) regulated by the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the “Act”), making funds the predominant investment vehicle in the United States. Everyday investors rely on funds to save for retirement, pay for college, and seek financial security. In this way, funds demonstrate how “Wall Street” can connect with “Main Street” to improve people’s lives.

By way of background, funds are created by investment advisers (“advisers”) that provide investment advisory (e.g., stock selection) and other services to their funds in exchange for a fee. …

World Peace And Gender Equality: Addressing Un Security Council Resolution 1325’S Weaknesses, Elizabeth Griffiths, Sara Jarman, Eric Talbot Jensen

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The year 2020 marks the twentieth anniversary of the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution (“UNSCR”) 1325, the most important moment in the United Nations’ efforts to achieve world peace through gender equality. Over the past several decades, the international community has strengthened its focus on gender, including the relationship between gender and international peace and security. National governments and the United Nations have taken historic steps to elevate the role of women in governance and peacebuilding. The passage of UNSCR 1325 in 2000 foreshadowed what many hoped would be a transformational shift in international law and politics. However, …

Resolutions Without Resolve: Turning Away From Un Security Council Resolutions To Address Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Emma K. Macfarlane

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In 2008, the United Nations first recognized rape as a war crime with the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1820. Since then, the fight against conflict-related sexual violence has become a frequent subject of Security Council Resolutions. But what, if anything, has changed? Wartime sexual violence is still prevalent today and shows no signs of slowing down. This Note argues that Security Council Resolutions are not an effective method to prevent conflict-related sexual violence. The procedural weaknesses in passing Security Council Resolutions and the structure of the Security Council itself may do more harm than good to the efforts …

The Stability Paradox: The Two-Parent Paradigm And The Perpetuation Of Violence Against Women In Termination Of Parental Rights And Custody Cases, Judith Lewis

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Despite changing family compositions, entrenched in family law is the antiquated idea that a two-parent household, or its approximation vis-à-vis a shared custody arrangement, promotes stability and integrity and, thus, is in the best interest of the child. Yet, the concept that the two-parent household (or shared involvement of both parents in the child’s life if the parents separate) promotes stability for the family and is best for the child is a dangerous fallacy. When rape or intimate partner violence (IPV) is present, or the re-occurrence of violence remains a threat, the family unit is far from stable.

This Article …

Ending Corporate Anonymity: Beneficial Ownership, Sanctions Evasion, And What The United Nations Should Do About It, Vineet Chandra

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the vast majority of jurisdictions around the world, there is a generous array of corporate forms available to persons and companies looking to do business. These entities come with varying degrees of regulation regarding how much information about the businesses’ principal owners must be disclosed at the time of registration and how much of that information is subsequently available to the public. There is little policy harmonization around the world on this matter. Dictators and despots have long taken advantage of this unintended identity shield to evade sanctions which target them; in July of 2019, the Center for Advanced …

The Soul Savers: A 21st Century Homage To Derrick Bell’S Space Traders Or Should Black People Leave America?, Katheryn Russell-Brown

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Note: Narrative storytelling is a staple of legal jurisprudence. The Case of the Speluncean Explorers by Lon Fuller and The Space Traders by Derrick Bell are two of the most well-known and celebrated legal stories. The Soul Savers parable that follows pays tribute to Professor Bell’s prescient, apocalyptic racial tale. Professor Bell, a founding member of Critical Race Theory, wrote The Space Traders to instigate discussions about America’s deeply rooted entanglements with race and racism. The Soul Savers is offered as an attempt to follow in Professor Bell’s narrative footsteps by raising and pondering new and old frameworks about the …

Predicting Supreme Court Behavior In Indian Law Cases, Grant Christensen

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This piece builds upon Matthew Fletcher’s call for additional empirical work in Indian law by creating a new dataset of Indian law opinions. The piece takes every Indian law case decided by the Supreme Court from the beginning of the Warren Court until the end of the 2019-2020 term. The scholarship first produces an Indian law scorecard that measures how often each Justice voted for the “pro- Indian” outcome. It then compares those results to the Justice’s political ideology to suggest that while there is a general trend that a more “liberal” Justice is more likely to favor the pro-Indian …

Thirteenth Amendment Litigation In The Immigration Detention Context, Jennifer Safstrom

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article analyzes how the Thirteenth Amendment has been used to prevent forced labor practices in immigration detention. The Article assesses the effectiveness of Thirteenth Amendment litigation by dissecting cases where detainees have challenged the legality of labor requirements under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Given the expansion in immigration detention, the increasing privatization of detention, and the significant human rights implications of this issue, the arguments advanced in this Article are not only currently relevant but have the potential to shape ongoing dialogue on this subject.

Emergencies End Eventually: How To Better Analyze Human Rights Restrictions Sparked By The Covid-19 Pandemic Under The International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights, Eric Richardson, Colleen Devine

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, states have been quick to adopt emergency measures aimed at curbing the spread of the virus. However, poorly constructed restrictions threaten to undermine hard won human rights protections and may in fact erode important elements of international human rights law as a result of overreaching implementation or lack of rigorous analysis in how the restrictions are put, and kept, in place. This article analyzes the International Convent on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) standards which apply to emergency regulation in times of public health crisis and the tangled morass of legal tests which …

Designing Legal Experiences, Maximilian A. Bulinski, J.J. Prescott

Book Chapters

Technological advancements are improving how courts operate by changing the way they handle proceedings and interact with litigants. Court Innovations is a socially minded software startup that enables citizens, law enforcement, and courts to resolve legal matters through Matterhorn, an online communication and dispute resolution platform. Matterhorn was conceived at the University of Michigan Law School and successfully piloted in two Michigan district courts beginning in 2014. The platform now operates in over 40 courts and in at least eight states, and it has facilitated the resolution of more than 40,000 cases to date. These numbers will continue to grow …

Anti-Modalities, David E. Pozen, Adam M. Samaha

Michigan Law Review

Constitutional argument runs on the rails of “modalities.” These are the accepted categories of reasoning used to make claims about the content of supreme law. Some of the modalities, such as ethical and prudential arguments, seem strikingly open ended at first sight. Their contours come into clearer view, however, when we attend to the kinds of claims that are not made by constitutional interpreters—the analytical and rhetorical moves that are familiar in debates over public policy and political morality but are considered out of bounds in debates over constitutional meaning. In this Article, we seek to identify the “anti-modalities” of …

The Doctrine Of Clarifications, Pat Mcdonell

Michigan Law Review

Clarifications are a longstanding but little-studied concept in statutory interpretation. Most courts have found that clarifying amendments to preexisting statutes bypass retroactivity limitations. Therein lies their power. Because clarifications simply restate the law, they do not implicate the presumption against retroactivity that Landgraf v. USI Film Products embedded in civil-statute interpretation. The problem that courts have yet to address is how exactly clarifying legislation can be distinguished from legislation that substantively changes the law. What exactly is a clarification? The courts’ answers implicate many of the entrenched debates in statutory interpretation. This Note offers three primary contributions. First, it summarizes …

Rethinking The Reasonable Response: Safeguarding The Promise Of Kingsley For Conditions Of Confinement, Hanna Rutkowski

Michigan Law Review

Nearly five million individuals are admitted to America’s jails each year, and at any given time, two-thirds of those held in jail have not been convicted of a crime. Under current Supreme Court doctrine, these pretrial detainees are functionally protected by the same standard as convicted prisoners, despite the fact that they are formally protected by different constitutional amendments. A 2015 decision, Kingsley v. Hendrickson, declared that a different standard would apply to pretrial detainees and convicted prisoners in the context of use of force: consistent with the Constitution’s mandate that they not be punished at all, pretrial detainees …

The Scales Of Reproductive Justice: Casey’S Failure To Rebalance Liberty Interests In The Racially Disparate State Of Maternal Medicine, Mallori D. Thompson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Despite the maternal medicine crisis in the U.S., especially for Black women, legislatures are challenging constitutional abortion doctrine and forcing women to interact with a system that may cost them their lives. This Article proposes that because of abysmal maternal mortality rates and the arbitrary nature of most abortion restrictions, the right to choose an abortion is embedded in our Fourteenth Amendment right to not be arbitrarily deprived of life by the State. This Article is a call to abortion advocates to begin submitting state maternal mortality data when challenging abortion restrictions. The call for attention to life was central …

Strengthening Sanctions: Solutions To Curtail The Evasion Of International Economic Sanctions Through The Use Of Cryptocurrency, Emma K. Macfarlane

Michigan Journal of International Law

Despite the ubiquity of cryptocurrency, no international uniform regulatory system exists. State-by-state regulation of cryptocurrencies has problematic implications for cross-border investigations and predictability in application. Moreover, this regulatory framework leaves open opportunities for actors worldwide to violate international sanctions with impunity.

This Note posits that an international regulatory framework is necessary to combat the evasion of financial sanctions on practical and theoretical grounds. It further argues that the best way to structure this new framework is through the enactment of a new multilateral treaty. A formal international regulatory mechanism for cryptocurrencies would have numerous benefits, foremost among them limiting the …

Differentiating The Corporation: Accountability And International Humanitarian Law, David Hughes

Michigan Journal of International Law

Corporations are significant global actors that are continuing to gain international legal status. Regulatory efforts have closely followed persistent claims that various forms of corporate activity are adversely affecting individual welfare and societal objectives. Such observations are perhaps most acute during instances of armed conflict. The history of corporate misdeeds occurring within or contributing to the perpetuation of warfare is now well-documented. However, the relationship between international humanitarian law—the legal field governing the conduct of war—and corporations receives less attention than other areas of international law where the treatment of business entities have made important advancements. This article considers the …

Constitutional Review Of Federal Tax Legislation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yoseph M. Edrey

Law & Economics Working Papers

What does the Constitution mean when it says that “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” (US Const. Article I, Section 8, Clause 1)? The definition of “tax” for constitutional purposes has become important in light of the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in NFIB v. Sebelius, in which Chief Justice Roberts for the Court upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act under the taxing power. This has led to commentators questioning …

Due Diligence In International Tax Law, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Gianluca Mazzoni

Book Chapters

This chapter describes how the due diligence standard was developed in international tax law before 2008, and then how the standard was greatly modified after the financial crisis, the enactment of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010 (FATCA), and the subsequent development of the Common Reporting Standards (CRS). The chapter outlines how the due diligence concept is applied to private actors, especially financial institutions, to prevent tax evasion. It ends with some conclusions including that while due diligence in international tax law is currently embodied in a specific set of rules, there remains an absence of an overarching …

Clerking For Roger J. Traynor, Roland E. Brandel, James E. Krier

Book Chapters

Justice Roger J. Traynor was born in Utah in 19001 the son of a miner and drayman. He left after high school to undertake undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, eventually earning (simultaneously) a Ph.D. in political science and a law degree from Boalt Hall, the university's law school. He practiced law for just a few months, then returned to the university to teach in its political science department. A year later, in 19301 he joined the law faculty, where he worked until his appointment to the California Supreme Court in 1940. He became chief justice …

Coca Cola: A Decisive Irs Transfer Pricing Victory, At Last, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Gianluca Mazzoni

Law & Economics Working Papers

Coca Cola v. Commissioner (Tax Court, Nov. 18, 2020) is the first decisive IRS victory in a major transfer pricing case since 1979. If the outcome is not reversed on appeal, this will mark an important shift in transfer pricing litigation in the US, and perhaps indicate that the IRS could win some of the other major pending cases, like the one against Facebook.

Is Gilti Constitutional?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In this article, Avi-Yonah argues that the global intangible low-taxed income regime may be an unconstitutional attempt to tax the foreign-source income of foreign entities, and he offers an alternative.

“Champion Man-Hater Of All Time”: Feminism, Insanity, And Property Rights In 1940s America, Magdalene Zier

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Legions of law students in property or trusts and estates courses have studied the will dispute, In re Strittmater’s Estate. The cases, casebooks, and treatises that cite Strittmater present the 1947 decision from New Jersey’s highest court as a model of the “insane delusion” doctrine. Readers learn that snubbed relatives successfully invalidated Louisa Strittmater’s will, which left her estate to the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, by convincing the court that her radical views on gender equality amounted to insanity and, thus, testamentary incapacity. By failing to provide any commentary or context on this overt sexism, these sources affirm the …

The Wolf We Feed: Democracy, Caste, And Legitimacy, Benjamin Justice, Tracey L. Meares

Michigan Law Review Online

Procedure is central to American public legal discourse. From the soaring rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the American legal tradition rests on the principle that law must be both derived and applied according to fair process. Consider that in the 2020 election the Trump Administration resorted to fervent and false allegations of widespread voter fraud—that the election process was fundamentally unfair—in order to weaponize Republican voters’ ostensible commitments to fairness against what was, objectively, one of the least procedurally unfair elections in history. Yet the four-year period of the Trump …

Clashing Canons And The Contract Clause, T. Leigh Anenson, Jennifer K. Gershberg

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article is the first in-depth examination of substantive canons that judges use to interpret public pension legislation under the Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions. The resolution of constitutional controversies concerning pension reform will have a profound influence on government employment. The assessment begins with a general discussion of these interpretive techniques before turning to their operation in public pension litigation. It concentrates on three clashing canons: the remedial (purpose) canon, the “no contract” canon (otherwise known as the unmistakability doctrine), and the constitutional avoidance canon. For these three canons routinely employed in pension law, there …

Researching Education Law, Keith Lacy

Law Librarian Scholarship

Education law in the United States is heavily informed by principles of federalism. However, the importance of education nationally has increasingly led to the federal government’s involvement—particularly in respect to funding education and enforcing civil rights. The following is a brief description of the structure of education law in the United States, highlighting resources that may be helpful when researching legal issues involving teachers, students, and schools.

A Feminist Economic Perspective On Contract Law: Promissory Estoppel As An Example, Orit Gan

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Economic analysis is a highly influential theoretical approach to contract law. At the same time, feminist analysis of contract law offers an important critical approach to the field. However, feminist economics, a prominent alternative approach to mainstream neo-classical economics drawing from both economic theory and feminist theory, has only been applied scarcely and sporadically to contract law. This Article seeks to bridge this gap and to apply the key features of feminist economics to an analysis of the doctrine of promissory estoppel. This Article uses promissory estoppel as an example to demonstrate a feminist economic analysis of contract law.

A Podcast Of One’S Own, Leah M. Litman, Melissa Murray, Katherine Shaw

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In this short Essay, we discuss the lack of racial and gender diversity on and around the Supreme Court. As we note, the ranks of the Court’s Justices and its clerks historically have been dominated by white men. But this homogeneity is not limited to the Court’s members or its clerks. As we explain, much of the Court’s broader ecosystem suffers from this same lack of diversity. The advocates who argue before the Court are primarily white men; the experts cited in the Court’s opinions, as well as the experts on whom Court commentators rely in interpreting those opinions, are …